Tahiti Views

Just in time for the new year! The Oracle PeopleSoft group now have their docs on Oracle.com in HTML format, hooked up to a Tahiti search: Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Hosted PeopleBooksJohn Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com0

You've probably heard both sides of this argument: throw hardware at performance problems, no no, improve the code. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror comes down on the "more hardware" side in this post: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive Usually I agree with Jeff, but John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com2

Here's another ode to a small but fundamental aspect of Oracle, following the same theme as The Humble IF Statement. This time, let's look at the COUNT( ) function. I think when you look at it the right way, it opens up the whole story about database performance. What's the first thing you do when poking around an unfamiliar system? I'll bet it involves SELECT COUNT(*) queries in one way or John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com0

Things never really change. Even with XML, sometimes long lines are a big hassle. For example, if you have a wide code example that runs off the side of the page, and your formatter doesn't offer a way to adjust the page margins for one element, or to auto-shrink the font size. I was spoiled back in the day by the ability of editors like XEDIT to apply formats to ranges of lines, so I hadn't John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com0

Ran across this old paper from Edsger Dijkstra, discussed on Slashdot: On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science, as a PDF of scanned handwriting or the text transcript. I'm not going to attack or defend the overall thesis, but anyway this paragraph I will agree with: My next linguistical suggestion is more rigorous. It is to fight the "if-this-guy-wants-to-talk-to-that-guy" syndromeJohn Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com2

I run into this situation now and then by accident. If I could just figure out how to bottle it, all the world's software problems would be solved! Here's the scenario: - Notice a slight bug in some program output (typically a web page). - Make the obvious code change, reload the page, bug is still there. - Make more aggressive code change, making code more modular. Still no dice. - Add John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com3

I've always been intrigued by the FIRST_ROWS hint, so I paid special attention when we reached it in the 11g SQL Tuning class. But I'm still puzzled. The course notes said that although you shouldn't be using hints generally, when you do, FIRST_ROWS is the most useful of the hints (in the form FIRST_ROWS(n) where you specify how many rows to optimize for). Also that it's not effective when theJohn Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com7

I've just finished taking the (EM-based) Performance Tuning course and the SQL Tuning course. It's always a strange feeling taking a course where I already have hands-on experience, or I was around in the early days when standards were being hammered out. Sometimes that odd feeling (I John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com0

Constraints are simultaneously one of my most favorite and least favorite Oracle Database features. They're great for keeping bad data out of the database. They're a terrible imposition on object-oriented, agile, or coding style. They save a ton of repetitive coding, writing the same logic in different languages. Hey, we already wrote all that redundant code John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com1

TCHO, a San Francisco chocolate company, had a booth. As an East Bay booster, I have to stay loyal to Scharffen Berger, one of whose founders recently died, and Charles Chocolates. Both just down the street from me, both offering factory tours and sometimes free samples. Enterprising panhandlers stock up on conference swag. Hey, I think I saw one of those guys Wednesday afternoon in Moscone John Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com0

At OOW, I ran into Stephen Feuerstein after seeing him demonstrate Quest Software's "Quest Code Tester" product. Considering how I might use a product like that for testing web-based applications, I suggested a couple of enhancements. The biggest, most important procedures that I test in PL/SQL are those that generate entire web pages. For that kind of testing, you can't look at whether data hasJohn Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com1

Here's the HP Oracle Database Machine talked about in Larry's keynote. On the way out, some audience members said they were drooling over it. I don't know if that's a good idea; didn't see anything about moisture resistance in the tech specs. I noticed that the box was about the same height as Larry. In the same way we talk about pizza boxes, 5U vs. 10U servers, etc., will we one day measure theJohn Russellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089970732272081637noreply@blogger.com1